Jean Dufresne

Jean Dufresne (born February 14, 1829 in Berlin , † April 15, 1893 there ) was a German chess master and author.

Life

Jean Dufresne was the son of the Jewish merchant Jacob Ephraim Dufresne. He attended the Gymnasium zum Grau Kloster in Berlin until 1847 and then studied law and cameralia in his hometown and in Breslau . Because his father lost his fortune and could not continue to finance his studies, Dufresne gave up studying in 1852 and turned to journalism .

For many years Dufresne was the editor of Publicist , Deutsche Zeit , Deutsche Reform and, most recently, at the post office until 1875 , where his increasing deafness forced him to give up this job. From then on he devoted himself almost exclusively to chess.

He could not finish the great work on mathematics he had begun . In 1893, Dufresne, now completely deaf, suffered a stroke from his life.

chess

Dufresne considered himself to be a student of Adolf Anderssen : "As Anderssen's oldest living student, I may well call myself, since before his trip to the world tournament in London [1851] I was his main opponent in Berlin and played with him every day for months." both often together, their best-known game is the evergreen game . Although Dufresne lost that game, he was able to take on the much more famous Anderssen. Dufresne was able to win three of the six games played on the occasion of Anderssen's Easter visit in Berlin in 1868 and keep one a tie.

He became known as a chess author through his Theoretical-Practical Handbook of the Game of Chess , published in 1863 . It is a forerunner of the Little Textbook of Chess , which he published in 1881, which is still famous today . This book achieved unusually large sales. In 1892 the 6th edition appeared. After Dufresne's death, Jacques Mieses expanded it into a textbook on the game of chess on behalf of the Reclam publishing house . During the time of National Socialism , the names of Jewish chess masters were deleted from the editions edited by Max Blümich (15th 1941 and 16th 1943). After the Second World War , Rudolf Teschner brought it up to date. It is still a standard work in Germany today; the 31st edition appeared in 2004.

The book contains the rules of the game, an outline of the history of the chess game with the most important names, tournaments and competitions, an overview of the opening with commented master games and an overview of the finals.

Dufresne published three novels under the anagrammatic pseudonym ESFreund , with which he had little success. For years it was even suspected that Jean Dufresne was ESFreund's pseudonym . Egbert Meissenburg finally cleared up this rumor in the castling of 1980.

Rediscovery of the tomb

Bronze plaque on the tombstone

Thanks to the efforts of the Emanuel Lasker Society , the grave of Dufresne was rediscovered in the Jewish cemetery in Weißensee in 2002 . Lengthy research, especially by René Schilling in the cemetery archive, finally made it possible to find the existing gravestone based on the traditional grave number and the barely decipherable characters "chmeister" on the heavily damaged stone.

The youth warden of the Berlin Chess Association , Carsten Schmidt, called for donations for a memorial plaque in December 2002. But the action did not meet with sufficient response. It was only thanks to the chess historian Ralph Schiffmann (1931–2009) and with the support of SG Hermsdorf that things got moving in 2003. It was also Schiffmann who, through his “great commitment and financial generosity, (made) possible that the gravestone of the meritorious chess author Jean Dufresne was restored to a worthy condition." (Saremba)

On October 20, 2006, the bronze plaque attached to the gravestone - damaged by war and weather - was inaugurated.

Works

• Theoretical-practical manual of the game of chess. Theory of openings and endings . Julius Springer, Berlin 1863
• Anthology of chess problems . Louis Gerschel, Berlin 1864
• The practical chess master . B. S. Berendsohn, Hamburg 1865
• Collection of easy chess problems (first part) ( Memento from November 29, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 252 kB) Philipp Reclam, Leipzig 1881 (Electronic Edition, Anders Thulin, Malmö 2010)
• Small textbook of the game of chess . Philipp Reclam, Leipzig 1881 (for the numerous later editions see above)
• Checkers little textbook . Philipp Reclam, Leipzig 1884

literature

• Andreas Saremba: Jean Dufresne - unwilling chess author? 2nd Edition. Publication by the Emanuel Lasker Society, 2006

Web links

• Literature by and about Jean Dufresne in the catalog of the German National Library
• Visit of the grave in May 2002 by the Emanuel Lasker Society
• Report on the unveiling of the memorial plaque ( memento from February 19, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) at the Berlin Chess Association
• The chess player and chess author Jean Dufresne (accessed February 17, 2020)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Small textbook on the game of chess , preface to the first edition, Berlin, January 3, 1881.
2. ↑ Textbook of the game of chess . 31st edition. 2004, ISBN 3-15-021407-6 .
3. ^ Rochade , No. 197, December 20, 1980, p. 25.